They have almost everyone covered, if not they will.
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An unnamed official? Painting with a broad brush in very vague and general terms the type of exchanges that have been going on for years. Makes me wonder if the DPP is paving the way to move against political opponents under the guise of “national security”? That would be a throwback to the past.
“China is interfering with our elections” is the new:“Russia is interfering with our elections”.
Yes, no evidence needed, just repeat it often enough. I bet, we’ll see lots of those accusations as we go into the election season.
Welp, they got schwarzwald.
From the 2018 article posted by @tango42 above:
The official said the groups targeted for engagement are [among many other groups] young people and students
So how is that turning out? Let’s look at one example in 2024:
Henry Wang enjoyed his recent trip to the province of Sichuan. The 22-year-old was in China to attend a camp for young Taiwanese. He spent seven nights in four-star hotels, feasting on hot pot, viewing pandas and visiting historic sites. The Chinese government paid for most of it. The only annoying part was the political indoctrination. He tolerated yammering about cross-strait unity, praise for China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and songs about being one family. “I thought of it as the extra cost I had to pay for a cheap trip,” he says. As long as you know you are on a “United Front tour”, you can ignore the propaganda.
What’s the outcome of this process?
Like Mr Wang, young Taiwanese may still see United Front trips to China as a good deal. But the excursions are unlikely to change their views. Past studies have shown that as Taiwanese people gain more exposure to China, they focus on the differences—and their Taiwanese identity grows stronger. Mr Wang, for example, felt no particular sense of belonging in China. “It’s not like I become a Japanese person after visiting Japan,” he says. He recommends the United Front tours as a way to experience an “unfamiliar culture”, one that is “totally different” from Taiwan’s. That is the opposite of what China hopes to achieve with such trips.
Source: United Front Summer Camp story from the Economist, found here: Songs, pandas and praise for Xi: how China courts young Taiwanese
Since this article is paywalled, I’ll include it below the line:
Summary
China | United Front summer camp
Songs, pandas and praise for Xi: how China courts young Taiwanese
Come for the hot pot, endure the propaganda
July 11th 2024|Taipei
THE ECONOMIST
Henry Wang enjoyed his recent trip to the province of Sichuan. The 22-year-old was in China to attend a camp for young Taiwanese. He spent seven nights in four-star hotels, feasting on hot pot, viewing pandas and visiting historic sites. The Chinese government paid for most of it. The only annoying part was the political indoctrination. He tolerated yammering about cross-strait unity, praise for China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and songs about being one family. “I thought of it as the extra cost I had to pay for a cheap trip,” he says. As long as you know you are on a “United Front tour”, you can ignore the propaganda, he adds, referring to the branch of the Communist Party in charge of boosting its influence among Chinese abroad.
The United Front Work Department sponsors many such trips. They aim to immerse Taiwanese high-schoolers and university students in Chinese culture and to foster their sense of Chinese nationalism. Before 2020 several thousand Taiwanese students went to China each summer for internships and exchanges. These largely stopped during the pandemic, but the number is growing again. In 2023 Chinese officials boasted of all the Taiwanese young people attending summer camps and events in China. Around 1,300 Taiwanese are thought to be participating in a youth summit in Beijing this month. At its opening ceremony Song Tao, the head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, called on them to become the “vanguard force against Taiwan-independence separatism”.
All of this ought to please Mr Xi, who says young people in China and Taiwan should be the driving force for peaceful unification. In April, while welcoming Taiwan’s former president, Ma Ying-jeou, to Beijing, Mr Xi introduced new slogans about cultivating Chinese nationalism in Taiwanese people. Xinhua, a state news agency, commented on the rhetoric: “Taiwanese youth are not ‘naturally independent’, but have the culture, history and values of the Chinese nation flowing in their blood and deeply hidden in their hearts.”
China’s leaders accuse Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party of promoting separatism. But the island’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), embraces Chinese nationalism. The KMT encourages cross-strait exchanges. During this month’s youth summit, Mr Ma delivered a speech (over video) in which he called on young people in China and Taiwan to “build the Chinese nation’s beautiful future together”. At another event, in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, a former KMT chairwoman, Hung Hsiu-chu, warned that America was trying to drive Taiwan towards war with China and that youngsters in both places should unite to resist it.
chart: the economist
None of this is winning over young Taiwanese. Polls show that more than 80% of those under the age of 35 consider themselves Taiwanese rather than Chinese. More than 90% of those in their 20s believe Taiwan and China are two different countries (see chart). Among this age group, the desire to work, study or invest in China is dimming, with the share of those expressing interest dropping from 33% in 2019 to 3% in 2022. Around 300 Taiwanese students a year go to China for university, compared with 1,300 in the mid-2010s. The number of Taiwanese under the age of 30 who work in China has declined by around 70% over the past decade, to 17,000 in 2022.
The declining appeal of China is easy to understand. Once seen as a land of economic opportunity for young Taiwanese, it now feels less dynamic as its economy slows. China’s own young people spread memes about being unemployed, disillusioned or burned out. Then there is the threatening legal environment. On June 21st China’s highest courts and security ministries jointly issued new guidelines “for punishing ‘Taiwan independence’ diehard separatists for committing crimes of secession and the incitement of secession”. The rules prohibit such activities as promoting Taiwan’s inclusion in international organisations or suggesting in the media that it is not a part of China. Anyone seen to be breaking the law could be tried in absentia. Some violations, such as “plotting independence with the help of external forces”, might carry the death penalty.
The Taiwanese government has called the guidelines a “crude provocation” and warned its citizens to avoid unnecessary travel to China. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which deals with China, says it still supports cross-strait exchanges, but wants young Taiwanese to be aware of the Communist Party’s intentions. The council also notes that, since 2020, China has banned its own students from studying in Taiwan. And in the past year at least eight Taiwanese with military or police backgrounds have been detained in China.
Like Mr Wang, young Taiwanese may still see United Front trips to China as a good deal. But the excursions are unlikely to change their views. Past studies have shown that as Taiwanese people gain more exposure to China, they focus on the differences—and their Taiwanese identity grows stronger. Mr Wang, for example, felt no particular sense of belonging in China. “It’s not like I become a Japanese person after visiting Japan,” he says. He recommends the United Front tours as a way to experience an “unfamiliar culture”, one that is “totally different” from Taiwan’s. That is the opposite of what China hopes to achieve with such trips. ■
Guy
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